Cannabis is the highest valued- albeit covert- agricultural product in California, with an estimated annual $23.3 billion in cash farm receipts. Approximately 13.3 million pounds of cannabis were produced in California in 2016. Between 165,000 and 230,000 farmers and farmworkers are estimated to be employed in California’s cannabis industry.

Climate-related occupational hazards have historically received little attention. In 2009, NIOSH began work to address this gap and developed a framework to identify climate-related occupational hazards. Recently, NIOSH investigators published new work in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene. Based on a review and assessment of the peer-reviewed literature from 2008–2014, the article updates…

The videos are each 2 to 3 minutes long and based on feedback from farm worker focus groups that said they would prefer watching short, informative videos on heat illness rather than receive written pamphlets.

The joys of summer are here, but with them come the hazards of working in the heat. Acclimatization to heat is an important part of keeping safe as temperatures rise. This natural adaptation to the heat takes time, and from a management perspective, it may require careful planning.

Note: Eddie and his co-workers have been working throughout the summer season on CA farms to better understand how to prevent heat illness associated with farm work. Data collected includes the internal temperature of participants as they work, how much water they drink, and on-site weather conditions.

The PBS FRONTLINE 2013 documentary, “Rape in the Fields,” highlights undocumented women from California’s Salinas and Fresno areas as well as Washington’s Yakima Valley experience with sexual harassment and rape suffered at the hands of their supervisors. The women tell of their ordeals, sometimes at gunpoint, and fear of losing their jobs or being deported if they complain or leave. Often, the women do not speak English, are poor, in debt, and / or responsible for supporting their family.

It’s easy to see the dangers of construction work, or to imagine why logging would be the single most dangerous occupation. But farm work is far from most people’s minds when it comes to dangerous work. It turns out that that’s partly because so little is reported about the dangers, either to the media or to government agencies.